By all accounts, this has been a down year for the Chicago Bulls. The team has squandered any hope of being competitive this season with a 5-14 record. The team morale in the locker room and trust in head coach Billy Donovan is at an all-time low. Even each member of the Bulls' All-Star trio is significantly underperforming statistically. In an ironic twist that's equal parts hilarious and depressing, Zach LaVine at least leads the league in one important statistic.
It should come as no surprise, either, considering his track record. Drafted in the lottery to a Timberwolves team that would win a paltry 16 games in his rookie season and would never win more than 31 games in any of his three seasons in Minnesota, Zach wasn't given the best chance to succeed early on. Things wouldn't get much better in Chicago, however, as the Bulls have posted a losing record in six of the seven seasons led by LaVine. The lone exception came in a year when LaVine wasn't even the best player on the team, when DeMar DeRozan took the reigns in 2021-22.
What statistic am I referring to, you ask? Losing percentage, of course! Among all qualified NBA active players to have participated in 500 games or more, LaVine holds the worst winning percentage in the league. In 573 games played to date, LaVine has posted an embarrassingly poor record of 211-362, which equates to a win percentage of 36.8%.
The next closest player is Alex Len, who is still quite a ways off with a win percentage of 39%. Len is also a reserve player, so at the very least he has plausible deniability when it comes to being responsible for his team's losing ways.
Whether you believe he's responsible for it or not, Bulls guard Zach LaVine is statistically the biggest loser in the NBA.
If we're going to give Len a pass for being a bench player, it's only natural we take things further and look for the next biggest loser among the NBA's stars and proven starting-caliber veterans. That's where things get even more hilarious and embarrassing for the Bulls.
After Len in 2nd, we have another bench player with Gorgui Dieng in third, before coming to... you guessed it, Nikola Vucevic is the fourth biggest loser among the league's veterans. With a career record of 338-504, Vooch has posted a career-winning percentage of 40.1%.
Other notable players in the top 10 — err, the bottom 10 — include the likes of Jordan Clarkson, D'Angelo Russell, and Julius Randle. Not exactly great company we're keeping here, is it?
This is, unfortunately, the culture the Bulls have fostered in the decade since the Derrick Rose era. Despite having plenty of talent on this roster, they just aren't getting the job done. There's really no reason why Chicago shouldn't be playing at the same level as other mid-tier teams in the East such as New York and Atlanta. The fact of the matter is that these players have built reputations as losers and they're perfectly content to continue losing, so long as it keeps the bills paid.
Whether we like it or not, the Chicago Bulls are in dire need of a rebuild now more than ever. Trading Zach and detonating the bomb that blows this team up will pay dividends for the Bulls later, and if he's lucky, it just might even get LaVine to a team that will finally help increase his win percentage.